


Aoi

by twisted_sheets



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball, Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Everyone is Dead, M/M, Shinigami, Well not everyone, Yami no Matsuei AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 01:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twisted_sheets/pseuds/twisted_sheets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Kagami Taiga’s birthday. All he wants is a little peace and quiet. His fervent wish is that no one in the Division makes a fuss about it. Sadly fate is rarely obliging.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aoi

 

 

> _More than once she had the same dream: in the beautifully appointed apartments of a lady who seemed to be a rival she would push and shake the lady, and flail at her blindly and savagely. It was too terrible. Sometimes in a daze she would ask herself if her soul had indeed gone wandering off._

**\-- The Kokiden Lady, Chapter 9, “Heartvine”,[ _The Tale of Genji_](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/murasaki-shikibu/tale-of-genji/chapter9.html)** [ _  
_](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/murasaki-shikibu/tale-of-genji/chapter9.html)

 

Around the graves of his parents and grandparents and ancestors long dead, tall red flowers bloom, little red dots dancing gracefully in the dappled sunlight as the cool autumn winds blow past.

“They’re red spider lilies,” Tatsuya tells him, perhaps noticing the way Kagami had been staring at the flowers. Smiling, he takes Kagami’s hand with pale, cool fingers and leads him through the maze of graves, to his family’s plot. His grip is strong and sure for someone so slender, steps unfaltering in the mountain’s uneven, mossy grounds. Kagami’s feet soon grow from damp to slippery wet in the early morning dew, and he’s grateful for Tatsuya’s support. “ _Higanbana_ , the flowers of the dead. The bulbs of the plant are poisonous, and they planted it around graves so that it would keep pests from eating the bodies.”

Kagami’s family plot is high up in a mountain, underneath the canopy of a forest of trees that are as old as the land itself. As they climb up, past graves crumbled and untended, past curved stone arches and dolls covered with tattered red cloth, Kagami, in a fit of curiosity, glances over his shoulder. The land behind them has grown hazy with fog, but he could see the red glow of the higanbana’s curling petals, will o’ wisps trailing after them.

Tatsuya tugs his hand sharply, drawing back his attention to him. “Don’t dawdle, Taiga. We’re almost there.”

An imposing moss-covered torii greets them when they reach Kagami’s family plot. There used to be a pair of stone lion-dogs near the gate, placed to serve as guardians and wards against evil spirits, but they are not there now. As their plot is one of the oldest in this graveyard, the graves and stone lanterns within it are covered in moss and lichens, near black and decrepit with age and wear.

All of them, except one.

It’s a small monument, hewn from some dark gray stone, still uncorrupted by the ravages of time. Engraved on it is Kagami’s name.

Kagami looks at Tatsuya, so pale and wan now, but smiling, and eyes fever-bright. The higanbana surrounds them, circling them, trapping them together. Under their crimson glow, Tatsuya’s ring gleams.

He reaches out to touch Kagami’s ring, twin to the one Kagami wore around his own neck, the gift Tatsuya had given him years before as the mark of their friendship and brotherhood. He grasps it tightly in a fist, then he _pulls_ , and Kagami lurches, a sudden, piercing ache in his chest.

“Happy birthday, Taiga.” In Tatsuya’s hand is not the ring, but a still-beating heart, blood red and steaming. Kagami’s heart.

When Kagami wakes from this dream, his mouth and nose is full of fur, his throat filled with the taste of ashes and death.

***

“One of these days, I’m going to kill you,” Kagami mutters as puts slices of raw fish and meat on the plate, the only food the cat would touch. The cat (still unnamed even after three months in his care, a demanding, whimsical but occasionally affectionate little stray that Kagami let into his house out of pity one rainy day and now refused to leave) only looks at him a blank expression on his face, probably used to his hollow threats, before rubbing its flank against his hand with a loud 'mwrow' then sniffing at the food and finally settling down to eat it.

Resisting the urge to cuddle the cat, Kagami gives it an exasperated pat on the head instead and he goes back to preparing his own breakfast, and as he still has an hour or two before the meeting starts, to make and pack his and partner’s, Kuroko’s, lunches as well.

Later, underneath the cool waters of the shower, the memory of the dream returns to him. It isn’t the first one he’d had about Tatsuya, and it’s not the strangest either, but it is unsettling all the same. Kagami had only visited his family’s graveyard plot with Tatsuya once, when they were in middle school, before the illness, before it made things too difficult for strenuous travel and visits. Yet in the dream he and Tatsuya seemed to be of their current age, strong and healthy, full of life, when the truth was they were the opposite.

He also no longer wore the ring he and Tatsuya shared. It had been lost months ago, and Kagami assumed it has disappeared into the ether.

And as far as Kagami could remember, no flowers grew around his family’s graves, only grass and moss and ferns and a few hardy shrubs. The higanbana would not have been able to grow in the stony soil of that mountain as it had in his dream.

It’s not a good start for a birthday, this dream. Nowadays, thoughts and memories of Tatsuya sometimes leave Kagami listless and empty, melancholia seeping into his heart, and he would be helpless in its onslaught for a few days, drowning until he rouses himself to pull himself out, but it’s not _too_ bad. Kagami’s had worse birthdays.

Last year, on his eighteenth birthday, after a long and difficult battle with a strange, wasting sickness, Kagami died.

And eventually, chose to become a shinigami to the Summons Division of EnmaCho.

***

He and Kuroko don’t have an assignment today, just him and his partner going through papers and writing reports and filling out forms, which was boring and troublesome -- well for Kagami, anyway, because Midorima and the Chief keeps sending back his reports for ‘illegibleness’.

The Chief had been particularly scathing about his assessment of Kagami’s handwriting and composition skills. The first time he handed his report, Akashi just took one look at his handwriting and said, “They appear to have been written by a demented chicken, Taiga. A cat could probably compose a far more coherent report with its paws.”

This wouldn’t have been a problem if they had just let Kuroko do the paperwork for them, but the Chief (and Midorima and Kuroko, the traitor) had been insistent Kagami write the reports as well. Kagami doesn’t know why they bother -- this whole thing only leads to headaches for them.

There isn’t much to write about lately though, as it has been a quiet month for the Summons Division, unlike the month before, when they had a rampaging demon hell bent on possessing Kuroko, who destroyed a chunk of EnmaCho and severely injured his partner and the others in the processes, before suddenly shifting its attentions to _Kagami_.

If it hadn’t been for Aomine’s stupid kitty form leaping in and clawing that demon to shreds and Kagami’s miraculously opportune fire spell then Momoi’s reibaku, Kagami’s pretty sure he would have been serving as meat suit to that fucker and the gods know what else.

Yeah, that had been a shitty month.

So as boring as this month had been, Kagami’s grateful for it. The incident with the demon shook everyone out of equilibrium, including himself (though not the Chief), and this calm month settled them all back into normal routine -- except for a few changes, some of it including Kagami. _Especially_ Kagami, it seems.

Still, for today, he’s really didn’t _want_ to be stuck in the office. The longer he stuck around there, the more chances he’d be exposed to unwanted surprises or attention over his birthday. Out of sight, out of mind -- and he really wanted to be both right now.

He’d been a witness to some of these birthday surprises, and frankly, after seeing the gigantic Murasakibara in a dress in one of these events and Kise popping out of a cake for Kasamatsu-sempai’s birthday party in something so unspeakable Kagami has erased it from his mind, it is not an experience he’d want to endure for himself.

***

On his last birthday as a (barely) living human, Kagami received a Maji cheeseburger from Tatsuya. The doctors had all but forbidden him from eating them, but Tatsuya persevered and smuggled him one. The terrible (ultimately useless) medicines he regularly took should have robbed him of his sense of taste, but Kagami is prepared to swear that Tatsuya’s illicitly smuggled burger was the best-tasting one he’s ever had.

***

His partner is standing outside his door when Kagami comes out. “Good morning, Kagami-kun.”

“Hey.” Kagami hands him his lunchbox, taking a moment study his partner. Kuroko’s face is a little flushed, eyes dark and lined with shadows, his hair still retaining a bit of bedhead, and tiny beads of sweat dot his forehead. “Bad night?”

Kuroko takes the box with brief thanks, and they start to walk, side by side, steps in sync. “The air conditioner of the apartment broke down in the middle of the night. The fan wasn’t…sufficient for the heat.”

He winces in sympathy. It’s terrible in Meifu this summer, with temperatures reaching new record highs and humidity so thick it is nearly suffocating. Kuroko is susceptible to the heat, miserable and cranky all throughout the day, suffering from headache and heat exhaustion. “Any chance of getting it repaired today?” Kagami asks.

Kuroko just turns to him and gives him a look. Ah, right. Fucking bureaucracy and red tape. And no doubt the maintenance office is swamped with requests for repairs. It’s going to take a while before the air conditioner would be fixed. But the air conditioner is Kuroko’s last bastion of sanity in this humid heat wave, and its loss must have sucked. A lot.

The words are out of his mouth before he could think things through. “Wanna stay with me while waiting for repairs?”

“That is very kind of you, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko replies, and then gives him a small smile. “But I believe I can manage.”

Kagami glances away, suddenly feeling embarrassed, though he can put a finger why. It’s not that unusual. He and Kuroko have shared rooms before, for assignments. “Fine,” Kagami splutters. “But don’t complain to me if you get heat stroke. Or melt.”

“We don’t melt, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko says. As they pass through a grove of ever-blooming cherry trees, a sudden storm of petals blow past on them. Kuroko remains unperturbed while Kagami is momentarily suffocated with pink blossoms. “Thank you for your concern, though. If anything else happens I’ll be sure to tell Kagami-kun of my troubles.”

Kagami resists the urge to give his partner a whack on the head for that hint of snark. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles instead, stopping briefly to shake off the petals. With a few quick strides he matches Kuroko’s pace again. “Do you think we’ll have anything interesting today?”

“Perhaps. Obon is near, and we have always had a few interesting cases when it comes. Are you bored with paperwork, Kagami-kun?” This time Kuroko’s teasing is evident in his voice.

This time he swats him lightly at the head. “Shut up, you know I’m bad at it. The Chief’s even hinting at handwriting and calligraphy lessons. With him or Midorima as tutors.” He shivers at the thought. He’s already spending far too much time with those two assholes with the extra fuda and spiritual defense lessons their Chief insisted he take after the demon incident. “I still don’t get why you can’t be the one to teach me. Or why I have to take them.”

“I can’t teach Kagami-kun because my penmanship and calligraphy skills are not as good as Midorima-kun or Akashi-san’s. Kagami-kun wouldn’t learn much from me, and Kagami-kun really needs to improve his penmanship if he wants to excel in fuda.”

“Aida-san didn’t have that much of a problem with my penmanship when she was teaching me fuda.”

“Kagami-kun also stretched Aida-san’s patience quite a lot, I remember.” Kuroko’s face smoothens back to its usual blank mask. “Ah, we’ve arrived.”

“Kurokocchi!”

Kise’s annoyingly cheerful voice rang loud even in the outdoors, and he would slammed right into Kuroko had not his partner, Kasamatsu-san, intervened and kicked him to the side. Ignoring Kise’s wails, Kasamatsu-san turns to them. “Sorry about the idiot,” Kasamatsu-san says, a fierce frown on his face. “Don’t know where he gets the energy from in this heat.”

“Good morning, Kasamatsu-san, Kise-kun.” Kagami just waves at them. “You’re also here for the meeting?”

“Ah, yeah. The Chief called us in.” They all give a collective relieved sigh when they enter their thankfully air-conditioned office. A chorus of greetings rose as they were spotted, surprisingly subdued considering Kise is with them. “Huh. The Chief must be already in.”

“Then I think it would be best to go to the conference room now,” Kuroko says. “Akashi-san doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

***

The meeting is brief today, just further clarifications and adjustments for the Bureau’s handling of the coming Obon. Festivals tend to be very busy times for them, all hands on deck, Obon particularly so. Kagami went through Obon his first week as a shinigami in this division. It had been a hellish experience, he had been so new and raw, and now he’s grateful he has more experience in his belt to deal with things.

Kagami leans back on his chair, tuning out the Chief, who is going over Midorima on some obscure point about the accounts. So far so good today. No one has offered him birthday greetings yet, not even Momoi, who is usually the first to give them. Now if he could just get away from the office, things would be great. His mind is wandering to what he should buy for dinner and if he should invite Kuroko over when he feels the now familiar icy chill of the Chief’s gaze on him.

The Chief is staring hard at him, lips curled to a disapproving frown. Kagami just stares back at him, unimpressed, but sits up a little straighter. The Chief then turns to his partner, “Tetsuya, there is a minor matter I want you and Taiga to look over today.” He hands them a folder. “Kazunari has done some preliminary investigation, so there shouldn’t be much for you to do other than find the culprit and bring them in by today.”

“Why couldn’t Takao do this? This isn’t even in our area,” Kagami asks. He winces a little when Kuroko covertly jabs him on the ribs.

“Sorry about this, guys,” Takao says, waving at them with a sheepish grin. He points his thumb to Midorima, who looks indignant at being involved in any way in this conversation. “Shin-chan needs some urgent help with the accounts and carting around some important stuff, so I can’t go. I’ll go over the case before you leave, though. It isn’t _too_ bad.”

The meeting is dismissed soon after that, but not before the Chief turns to him and says, “I will still be expecting you for our lessons tonight, Taiga. Please don’t be late.”

“I’m never late.” Kagami doesn’t miss the way Kuroko’s eyes narrow to sharp slits of icy blue at the Chief, who seems to return in with his own steady, unfathomable gaze, before sidling close to Kagami. Kuroko’s been doing that a lot now, since the demon incident.

Kuroko has always had that strange, narrow-eyed look when the Chief is around, but there seems to be something different, an undercurrent of disquiet and tension, with the way they trade gazes today. Kagami wonders what had went down between the two, in the aftermath of the demon. The Chief hadn’t been there when the demon attacked, having been called away for some high-level meeting. By the time he came back, everything had been over.

From what Momoi tells him, her words low and hushed as she shares it with him over cooking lessons, the two had _words_ about it. “Kuroko-kun seems very upset and expressed his concerns to Akashi-san,” Momoi says, her expression somber. Kagami hadn’t been there to witness it; he was still unconscious from the battle. When he asked Kuroko about it, he’d been given a cold shoulder and an even icier denial, so he dropped the subject.

“Kagami-kun,” Kuroko calls him. Shifting out of his thoughts, he heads over to his partner, who is standing beside Takao, the assignment folder in hand.

Kagami sighs, feeling troubled with today. But at least it looks like he’ll be out of the office, so he gets that wish. _Time to go to work_.


End file.
